Removing Negative Google Places Reviews!
Posted by Matthew Loop | 6 Comments
It doesn’t matter how great your business is. Sooner or later, you’re bound to get a negative review by a patient or customer. It’s practically inevitable. The question is, what’s the right way to handle the situation when you get one.
And… can you actually remove a negative review once it’s been posted on your Google+ Local (formerly Google Places) business page? This is, by far, one of the MOST common topics I’m asked about by chiropractors, entrepreneurs and other business owners.
The answer is no, you cannot delete reviews. See Google’s opinion on the matter at this link.
With that being said, there are 3 important things you can do today so that your credibility and trust factor doesn’t get tarnished. Here they are:
1) The first thing to do is to get MORE reviews and feedback from your current customers.
Ideally, you want to drown the negative out by having a disproportionate amount of positive reviews. In essence, if you have 50 positive reviews and one negative, that looks normal.
As mentioned before, even the best companies will have negative reviews. You cannot please everyone all of the time. I’m sure if you were to look on Amazon right now at your favorite book, you’d probably see it has some negative reviews.
The point is, it happens but realize that it doesn’t mean your online reputation is over.
All my Social Media Elite members have access to a killer Google+ Local email script sequence that gets you a SURGE of positive reviews in a short time. It got our office an extra 17 reviews in 3 days when we sent it out the first time!
2) Respond to the negative review.
If you verified your Google+ Local listing, you’ll be able to respond to the negative review. This is huge. The goal here is not to start a war or to do a counter-attack. You want to be the bigger person and take the high road.
The last thing you want to do is appear immature and combative. Always maintain professionalism and honesty. You may want to take the approach of, “We’re sorry you feel like this and we’re committed to making it better.”
3) If you feel this wasn’t a legit review (maybe done by a jealous competitor), click the the “Flag as Inappropriate” link below the negative feedback.
You may want to urge friends to click that same link while logged in to their Google accounts as well. Don’t expect anything to happen overnight, as Google is ridiculously slow to process these requests.
However, when they take a look, and if they note a regular pattern from a single IP address, this could be good for you.
Look, I know first-hand how horrible it feels to get a negative review online. It’s like getting sucker-punched in the stomach, especially when you pour your heart and soul into your work.
The most important thing is to take a step back, then respond accordingly while implementing the tips above. Never just emotionally react in the heat of the moment.
What are your thoughts?
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About the Author
Matthew Loop is an author, speaker, investor, philanthropist, and the highest paid social media revenue strategist in North America. He helps brands, startups, and small business owners multiply their influence, impact, and income by harnessing the power of the Internet. Since 2005 he’s trained over 21,000 clients in 25 countries. Millions have viewed his free business growth tutorials online. Connect with him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Going in with the idea of trying to remove a negative comment is absolutely the wrong mentality. Recovering well from a bad comment looks far better than trying to censor the opinions of others. People would notice it got removed and look poorly on you for that. It just compounds the problem. The absolute best solution is to win the reviewer back with exceptional customer service. You often look better in the end than you would have in the first place.
Hey Bryan… I agree with what you’re saying. If businesses could remove negative reviews, they probably would in an attempt to protect their reputation. The negative reviewer would just post the same thing on another site and it could heighten the problem.
As I mention in the post, how one responds to the review is key. A negative reviewer more than likely would not be back in that same business so you probably wouldn’t get another crack at customer service in person.
thanks matt. the additional challenge with the review system for businesses is that reviews may be illegitimate reviews from competitors or disgruntled employees. thus good advice on the handling negative reviews by working on getting them taken down.
Thanks Danny. I know… The system is horrible and very flawed. Usually the phony reviews have one review on their account and are sometimes anonymous users. You’d think Google would seriously fix this. It’s amazing that other businesses would sink so low to post a negative review about a competitor. Total losers mindset and scarcity mentality.
I just was looking at a bad review for a client of mine. I discovered that the account had one and only one day of activity in which they posted about 10 bad reviews of 10 different businesses providing a very, very specific service in one metro area, and two glowing reviews of another business providing that very specific service (Their own? I’ll leave you to judge that…)
The system could use some improvement to prevent this sort of abuse.
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